Bev Johns

Beverley Holden Johns has 35 years’ experience working with students with learning disabilities and emotional/behavioral disorders within the public schools of Illinois. She is now a learning and behavior consultant and an adjunct instructor for MacMurray College. She has taught part time at the college off and on since 1976 and strives to engage her students actively in the curriculum being taught.

During the Spring 2011 semester, she will teach online Characteristics of Students with Emotional/Behavioral Disorders and Medical and Health Issues. Incorporated into Characteristics of students with Emotional/Behavioral Disorders is a series of podcasts to accompany the class work. Included in both classes are the opportunities to observe students and to participate in discussion boards about the topics.

The podcasts are very short lectures designed to provide you with the reasons you should take the class, highlights of the syllabus, and a brief overview of different topics. You can download the podcasts and access them through your computer or your iphone. As one student said, “I can listen to the lecture while I am on the treadmill.” Since the lectures are short, you can listen to them multiple times to help you remember key content. My goal is to make my courses as accessible to each student as possible and to utilize a variety of methods to guarantee that accessibility. There will then be discussion boards to give you a chance to interact and ask questions about the content of the podcast.

Bev Johns is the 2000 recipient of the CEC Outstanding Leadership Award from the International Council for Exceptional Children, past international president of the Council for Children with Behavioral Disorders, and she is the 2007 Recipient of the Romaine P. Mackie Leadership Service Award. She served as president of the International Association of Special Education from 2006 to 2010. She presented the first Marden lecture at the University of Hong Kong.

Johns is the lead author of eleven books (and coauthor of four others). Her two most recent books are 401 Adaptations for Every Classroom released in October, 2010, by Corwin Press, and the 12th edition of the classic textbook on Learning Disabilities and other Related Mild Disabilities by Janet Lerner and Beverley Johns, released in November, 2010.

She is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who of American Women, Who’s Who in American Education and Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers. She has chaired ISELA, the Illinois Special Education Coalition (whose membership includes 13 statewide organizations) for 30 years. She is a past president of the Learning Disabilities Association of Illinois, and was the national state president’s representative serving on the Board of LDA of America. She has presented workshops across the United States and Canada; in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Sydney, Australia (keynote), Warsaw Poland; Hong Kong, China; Lima, Peru; and Riga, Latvia.